This is the ONLY book I’ve ever read in my whole life and you are NOT putting it on that fire! ~ Pleasentville
There’s one aspect of the heightened health protocols that I have always managed to avoid: I will not destroy the contents of the book exchange. I’ve always managed to tell myself that if I just lock the doors and don’t let anyone handle them, they’ll effectively be quarantined. I’ve always just skimmed that…and then one of my co-workers, probably with my best interest at heart – started bugging me about it this morning.
But shouldn’t you….?
And she wouldn’t let it go. She just wouldn’t. And my brain suddenly just frizzled…
And I gave in…
And as I sat there, cross-legged on the floor, stacking batch after batch of tattered, new and everything-in-between paperbacks into a box and watching them be ferried down to the incinerator (I had my team-mate do it, since she was the one who insisted that it be done, and honestly because I couldn’t bear to do it myself), I found that I knew what my Father must have felt like back when he worked at the warehouse. He used to come home joking about how many old text books he’d had to feed to the shredder that day, and as a kid I used to be furious…until Mum finally told me that every time he tore off a cover and threw a book into the shredder, he cried.
Four boxes. Four boxes, overflowing, in every language from English to Dutch…gone. Fed to the flames. My teammate, not being the bibliophile that I am, said casually as we were boxing up the last batch
The guys down at the garbage room were tearing the pages out before I left… ‘cause y’know, makes it easier to burn.
DON’T TELL ME THAT!!!!
Oh..um…sorry…should I tell you they’re kissing every page?
No. Don’t tell me that either. If I have to do this, its better I do it fast like taking off a band-aid.
I feel like a killer…I find myself guilty of libricide